The City Veins

Many things could be written or said about our show at Rebel NYC on Friday. I’m going to try to summarize the night as quickly as possible, because quite a bit happened in a very short period of time.

Charles and I drove up on Thursday night and made it in 5 hours, which is great. We stayed at his aunt’s place on Mercer, much better than where I have stayed on previous NYC trips. Charles and I went to a shitty NY bar and I drank cider while reading the Village Voice.

The next day, Charles and I found an awesome little Hummus place on MacDougal. It was good.

Initially, we were not too excited about the show. The guys in Lights Resolve have been very good to us over the last few months, and we to them as well. I understand why they wanted an earlier show, but that was going to result in us starting a short set at 7:15. We are a bit older than them, and our fans/friends are all part of the working world, so an early show shuts out a good number of the people who would come see us. Having said that, we appreciate that many people made an effort to get out to the gig despite its happy hour-like start-time.

The show ended up a success for a good many reasons. We played very well. Light Resolve packed the place. The stage was very high and quite spacious for a venue that does not cater specifically to rock bands. And we were harassed after we played, which I think means we did well. More people stepped up to talk to us after this show than any other, and many of those people were quite aggressive. There was just a really positive energy in the crowd, which was great.

Afterwards, Charles and I bolted to our favorite little midnight diner in the Meatpacking district, Florent. That is by far the least heterosexual and snooty thing I have ever said, but it is a fact. We used to go to this place all the time with our last band and, aside from when Charles was once propositioned for sex outside the diner, we have fond memories. The food is good and cheap, a rare New York feat.

Now my one rant about NYC: Everyone in New York claims to know some big-whig mogul who can make or break a band. Furthermore, those people want to argue that because their uncle/dog/grandmother owns Sony you must impress them or your career is over. I met some very nice people on Friday that wanted to impress me with how important their acquaintances were, and maybe they figure it’s an easy sell because we’re naive asses from outside NYC, likely to believe any sweet words thrown at us. That may have worked when I was 18, or even 22. But I don’t care about that stuff now, and no one really does. To those who think they can make or break a band: you cannot. Your day may not be done, but bands are no longer going to cower before you. Why would they? You don’t get them any money anyways. Just your funny paper.

Photos by Sean O’Kane.

I think that it was at about 6:00 on Friday that Aaron suggested that I needed a drink. We were sitting in Rebel, the venue we were playing in that night, and things were not going well. The club holds a variety of events, and they didn’t seem all that prepared for a rock concert. For example, setting up our show was delayed so that the woman singing some kind of techno thing late night could sound check. In addition, one of the bands on the bill had called just a few hours earlier to cancel, and Matt from Lights Resolve had lost an expensive piece of equipment. Finally, the bar had not been set up yet, so Aaron’s suggestion was not even possible. The only thing left for me to do was sit and soberly seethe.

I take our performances very seriously, and I don’t reaction well when things are not running well. So by about 6:15 I had pretty much written off our performance. I figured that there would be no one there because we were playing so early, and I assumed that we wouldn’t sound good because we didn’t have a lot of time to set up. I had visions of our bass amp deciding not to work, or a guitar that just refusing to stay in tune. My only consolation was going to be that I didn’t go to work on Friday. That, and I had really good hummus in the Village earlier that day.

Maybe it was because I didn’t care about my performance, or had such low expectations, but somehow the concert ended up being really good. Probably our best concert. We all played well, I personally had my best performance. It turns out that people did in fact show up, and that they liked us. There were even requests for us to take our shirts off. There were a lot of people who wanted to talk to Aaron and Spencer after the concert (it appears that I do a good job of looking like I want to be left alone after concerts). We gave away a lot of cds, and met a lot of people who might, in fact, come back to another concert! This is a new phenomenon for us, so forgive me for being a little excited. Hell, it is possible that I may have even been in a good mood by the end of the night.

So I guess the moral of the story is that I am a big pessimistic jerk. I would like to say that I learned my lesson, but I know myself too well.

You all should check out more pictures by Sean O’Kane. The club had a crazy light system set up. Complete with moving colored lights, strobe lights, and a smoke machine. I did briefly worry about a light blinding me, or the strobe sending me into a seizure, or falling of the stage in the dark, but the lights definitely made for some cool pictures.

Our next concert is this Saturday, November 24th at the Velvet Lounge, and it would be great to see as many of you as possible. We have some new songs, and if enough of you request it, I promise that I will make Aaron keep his shirt on.

I’m certain that blogging about the past events of ones life is a pretty low form of blog-writing, but we’ve sunk pretty low on our content as of late. Tarr Watch? It’s a pretty desperate depth to which we’ve sunk. Alas….

This Thursday Charles and I will head to New York for our gig at Rebel, to take place on Friday. Spencer is obviously going as well, but Charles and I are leaving the night before in order to take our sweet-ass time. I’m extremely excited about this weekend for a variety of reasons.

Since “lists” seem to be popular these days:

1) It reminds me of the good old Roosevelt Roosevelt days when Charles and I would drive from Hamilton College (where we went to school) to meet up with our other band-mates, which were living in DC at the time. We would drive enormous numbers of miles, often late at night. We learned to stay awake by smoking and turning the A/C on in November. But those were probably the least stressful moments of my life.

2) To me, NYC is palatable if taken in 2 day doses. I love walking around that city and poking into small record stores and coffee shops. I concede it would be horrible to live there.

3) We’re playing with our friends, Lights Resolve, and I enjoy the time we spend with them. There are likely to be many people in the audience, and that is a pretty solid motivator.

4) I don’t mean this as a slight against Adam, though it will probably be taken that way. But since he left the band, our gigs have been fun and it seems to transfer to the stage. When we fuck up, we laugh it off. Three people is a manageable number for issues of ego, jack-assery, and even logistics.

Some people find it depressing to spend money to go play a gig. But if you have fun gigging, it’s really not depressing at all. We are so far away from making any money it’s ridiculous to even think about the band in these terms. If it’s a chore then yes, it sucks to spend money and have to travel. I, for one, would prefer to think of it as fun. It was fun when I was 21 and traveling around from random place to random place. We used to play regularly in Aston, PA. Has anyone ever even heard of that place? I hadn’t, until we started gigging there. But it was great, and the memory is actually worth something to me. Adam didn’t like going to NYC (though he pushed for it before anyone else did), but had already stopped enjoying the band by the time he came to that conclusion.

As part of the continued trip down memory lane, go and check out the only solo song of my life. It was recorded in Boston in 2003, right after Roosevelt Roosevelt broke up. It’s not great.

Photo by Flickr user midweekpost.

I often find that other musicians/guitarists are disappointed when they talk to either Aaron or I about our equipment. For example, at DC9 last week, the tour manager for Lights Resolve asked me if my guitar was made in America, Mexico, or Japan. I had absolutely no idea, and still don’t. Sound guys will ask us questions like “how many watts is your amplifier, or is that a balanced out from the bass, or how big is the speaker?” We always answer these questions with blank stares. We just are not tech people.

That said, I am very excited about a guitar that tunes itself. Anything to cut down on setup time, and time between songs, is a godsend. Also, who wouldn’t want to play a “Robot Guitar?”

I also want to point out that this:

“‘I’m sorry, this is just lazy. With stuff like this, tuning is going to be a lost skill,’ wrote LettheBassPlay on the www.ultimate-guitar.com Web site forum.”

is completely idiotic, bordering on absurd. There are skills that are being replaced, or made easier, by technology that I think are useful; mixing by hand, or recording to analog for example. Tuning a guitar is not one of those skills. In fact, if tuning was such a useful skill to have you think that famous guitarists would do it themselves, rather than pay someone to do it for them. Seriously, when was the last time that Eric Clapton tuned a guitar? So thank you very much Mr. LettheBassPlay, but I want a robot guitar.

First picture by Flickr user pusgums. Second picture by Flickr user eschipul.

Several months ago when Amy Winehouse was on the cover of every music mag on the shelves, I think I made a statement that went something like “Fuck Amy Winehouse. She’s just the next Joss Stone.” Now I think that was a ridiculous statement.

In my view, in order to qualify as an artist you have to have more than a great voice. It’s fine to do a few covers, but when your most identifiable song was created and made popular by someone else (Joss Stone: Fell in Love With A Girl) you’re not worth a whole lot. This, of course, is in the modern era. It’s fine that Aretha Franklin’s greatest works were written by other people. She still qualifies as an artist. But I’m hesitant of labeling singers as “great” these days when I know how much can be done in production to make an average singer sound great. So for me, Joss Stone is just a very good singer, but she needs more than that.

But Amy Winehouse is not Joss Stone; her work is filled with vitriol, anger, and edge. I don’t like her slower, more melancholy work, but I love “Rehab”. I will defend this position against Charles, Spencer, or whoever else chooses to challenge me on this point. We bitch and moan about how the modern pop artist has distanced herself from the purity and strength of blues-influenced pop, or how the Rhythm and Blues of ‘60’s Motown doesn’t have enough of a place in modern music. Then an artist comes along with clear and proper influence, and we deride her for any other reason imaginable. I’ve even heard the argument that she’s not hot enough to be a pop artist. Fucking ridiculous.

Maybe the reason Amy Winehouse is a polarizing figure has more to do with our modern confusion over the public persona of our rockstars than with her music. Certainly, sex, drugs, and rock and roll is boring, and it seems that we now want our artists to be hardworking and brilliant in a different way. Or maybe I’m just getting too old. But I don’t think Amy Winehouse is manufacturing the excesses of rock and roll with her work; I think she is genuinely fucked up. And I like my fucked up artists, be it Jeff Buckley, Tom Waits, or even Thom Yorke and the Arcade Fire. None of those artists are fucked up in the same way, but they all have an element of discontent that seems to drive them forward. I like anger and discontent in my music. I can’t stand “love songs” and would be a clam if no-one ever wrote another one. It doesn’t have to be anger, per se, but the role of artists is to magnify our inadequacies and faults in order to point them back at us. Maybe discontent and absurdity are better words to describe it. Since we’re now too self-absorbed as a culture to enjoy a good protest song, it has to be about the inadequacy and absurdity of the individual. To this end, I feel that Amy Winehouse and these other artists genuinely understand both their own faults and the specific faults of others. And that, my friends, makes her better than Joss Stone.